Andrew Veeder on November 11th, 2013

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Four years after what was to be their stretch of “Wave Goodbye” shows and last run for the foreseeable future, Nine Inch Nails surprised everyone earlier this year with the announcement of a new album, “Hesitation Marks,” and subsequent “Tension” tour in support of it. Over the course of 28 songs that spanned their entire discography Friday night at Staples Center, they proved they are definitely back and better than ever.

Explosions In The Sky kicked off the night with 45 minutes of their signature instrumental post-rock, side-lit through cascading smoke that rolled across the stage. EITS always weave such a dense fabric of guitar texture and distortion that is made to be experienced in the loudest and largest space possible, so seeing them in the nearly 20,000-capacity Staples Center was a treat. They closed their set with the 10-minute “The Only Moment We Were Alone” from 2003’s “The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place,” finally really grabbing the attention of the chattering crowd.

As the seats and floor filled in more during intermission, “D|p 1.1” from William Basinski’s “The Disintegration Loops” ominously droned through the sound system, slowly fading away throughout the 30-minute break. Then the synthy ripple intro of “Copy Of A” throbbed through the arena and away we went.

Square grid lighting rigs hung above, strobing downward as each band member stepped into position under the light, the crowd losing it when Trent Reznor appeared with the lyrics, “I am just a copy of a copy of a copy.” Then they tore through “1,000,000,” “Terrible Lie” and “March of the Pigs” in rapid-fire and aggressive succession, Reznor’s jacked arms, outise a black sleeveless T-shirt, strangling the microphone until the music cut out at the end and the audience joined in belting, “Now doesn’t that make you feel better? / The pigs have won tonight / Now they can all sleep soundly / and everything is all right.”

Another “Downward Spiral” song was next with “Piggy,” the first of many of the night’s tracks that sounded incredibly bluesy, with the bassist’s groove high in the mix and Reznor moving to the keys to jam out the end of the song. During a run of five songs from “Hesitation Marks,” the band was joined by two back-up singers, Lisa Fisher and Sharlotte Gibson, who grounded “All Time Low” in funk and gave the harder “Disappointed” a soulful edge, like an industrial side B of “Dark Side Of The Moon,” as well as “Even Deeper” during the encore. It would have only taken a harmonica solo on “Find My Way” to make it a darker and haunting Muddy Waters.

It was one of the only signals of age in the 25-year-old project, the new material and retooled older tracks showing a maturity not seen in decades previous, like the saxophone solo on “While I’m Still Here.” Reznor, who is now 48, showed no sign of slowing down he pummeled through tracks like “Survivalism” and “Somewhat Damaged.” He played “The Frail” solo before the band launched into “The Wretched,” two more of five songs from “The Fragile” in the set. Fan favorites “Wish,” “The Hand That Feeds,” and “Head Like a Hole” closed out the main set, with thousands of arms in the air pumping and mouths singing, “Bow down before the one you serve,” before the “NIИ” logo slowly overtook the huge LED mesh screen hanging at the stage’s front.

The six-song encore featured “In This Twilight” from “Year Zero,” a song Reznor said was “so deep in the album you probably missed it” but revived as a dedication to Andrew Youssef, the local rock photographer who is terminally ill with colon cancer but was in attendance Friday to see one of his favorite bands.

NIN concluded the show with “Hurt,” as the original video with images of warfare, dying plants and the snake played behind the band. “The Downward Spiral” turns 20 next year, and that song and footage is still as powerful as ever.

The light show and set design of Nine Inch Nails’ concert was spectacular, as each song demonstrated the diverse capabilities of the stage plan. It was as if the concert was a lesson in maximizing the available resources to their fullest extent, upping the ante of previous tours by NIN and Reznor’s side project How to Destroy Angels earlier this year. The square grid lighting rigs above rose and fell, shined and strobed, tilted and twirled multi-directionally. The three LED mesh screens at front, mid and rear stage were more pixelated up close but gave the illusion at a distance that waves of light were washing across the band. There were lights all over, above and below and on each side, perfectly synchronized to the organized chaos on stage.

On “Disappointed,” LED vine beams appeared amid the band, morphing again and again until they were spinning geometric shapes in 3D buzzing around stage, before rippling digital glitches broke them up and apart, as the band played in dark silhouettes. “Find My Way” progressed as the back screen’s image looked on approach with a blue gaseous planet, skimming toward the surface and impending purple electrical storm. And the strobe lights on “Wish” charred confetti-like splotches into our retinas, which flashed like dust on a lens, as the myriad of other lights triggered in sequence. It was truly a marvel to witness in all of its glory. Nine Inch Nails have always elevated their stage show with every tour, but with the 2013 “Tension” stretch, they have set the bar incredibly high.

The audience on the floor, and in general, had a nerdy edge, a simmering level of anticipation and excitement that was nearly bubbling over. Some fans were younger, born after the band’s inception in 1988, but most were in their late 30s-to-50s, a healthy mix of salt-and-pepper hair and vintage T-shirts from “Pretty Hate Machine” and “The Fragile.” There was a lot of black, obviously, but surprisingly not a lot of leather. And afterward, it was a circus out there ”“ there was a Gravitron and bumper cars just outside at the fair on Chick Hearn Court, a surreal juxtaposition after the spectacle of a Nine Inch Nails show at Staples Center.